The young Bernadette Devlin (now Ms Bernadette McAliskey) figures in many of the files just opened in Dublin and in London. At a time when she was being feted by the international press, she failed to impress many Irish diplomats.
Following her sensational taking of the Mid-Ulster seat at Westminster and her part in the Battle of the Bogside in August, she became a world figure. On her US tour, she was given an audience by the UN secretary-general, U Thant.
The State's permanent representative at the UN, Mr Con Cremin, reported to Dublin that "the interview was largely a monologue on the part of Ms Devlin, with the secretary-general being unable to say anything until she paused for breath!" A British official reported to London that if U Thant "had not brought the interview to an end, Bernadette Devlin would have gone on indefinitely".
Mr Eamonn Kennedy, the Irish Ambassador in Bonn, linked her to the Rev Ian Paisley as a discredited extremist. She has "proved superb at breaking bricks on the barricades; off the barricades she tends to drop them. Her childish description of our government as `green Tories' is an indication of her sense of political realities."
Mr John Hume's verdict in late July to Mr Con Howard, first secretary in the London Embassy, was recorded for Iveagh House. "Bernadette was a disaster. She had gone wholly over to the International Socialists in Britain and lost credibility everywhere."
On August 25th, the British embassy in Washington sent a confidential memo to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London outlining Ms Devlin's media events during a fund-raising campaign which included a speech to students at Berkeley and a cocktail party at the Hunt Conrads' home on Pacific Avenue in San Francisco.
That embassy noted that Ms Devlin had made "a considerable impact as a personality and a political phenomenon" but much of the publicity she received concentrated on her as a personality and the "harrowing tales she tells" rather than on political substance.
"The press on the whole has been fairly objective about Bernadette and the Irish question, though naturally it has made quite a bit of play over Bernadette's youthful charisma."
In San Francisco, Ms Devlin's attendance at the cocktail party and her "exchange of clench-fisted salutes" with radical Berkeley students helped raise about $5,000, the British embassy said.
"Not bad going, I suppose," the official wrote, but he noted: "I think she was distinctly rattled by the rumours going around that some of the money would be used for buying arms for the IRA."
In Dublin later that year, the British ambassador to Ireland, Sir Andrew Gilchrist was keeping an eye on Ms Devlin's speeches and reported back to London on what he had found on December 2nd. "I enclose a few pamphlets collected by members of my staff at Bernadette Devlin's meetings. It is strange how much appeal the Maoists have in Ireland. As for the green forms, would you mind having 2,000 of them printed off, filled in with phoney names and mailed to Sinn Fein."
The green forms were Sinn Fein membership forms.